Oyster, an e-book subscription service, has announced that it will stop its operations and most of its team is moving to Google.
The company is referred to as the Netflix for Books because of the vast library of e-books offered to customers. The New York-based Oyster was founded by Willem Van Lanckerin, Eric Stromberg and Andrew Brown in 2012 and the company started paid subscription on September 2013.
After two years in service, Oyster has now announced that it will cease its operations in the coming months.
"We will be taking steps to sunset the existing Oyster service over the next several months," say the founders in a blog post.
The Oyster e-book subscription service came for $9.95 a month, a subscription model that was also compared to Netflix, Spotify and Hulu. The subscription plan also attracted Amazon, which launched a subscription service called Kindle Unlimited for $9.99 per month. Kindle Unlimited subscribers have access to unlimited audiobooks and e-books.
While Oyster's subscription seemed attractive, the service was unable to change traditional book sales. Many customers subscribe to video subscription services; however, many people are still not willing to subscribe for similar e-book services.
In April this year, Oyster also announced that the company is expanding and it has raised additional capital. The company planned to enter online retailing through an e-book store, which sold individual books in the hope of attracting more customers. However, it seems that the new model also did not help Oyster.
A Google spokesperson spoke to Re/code and confirmed that many employees of Oyster are joining Google Play Books. Neither Google nor Oyster have confirmed details of the acquisition, but Re/code cites sources who report that Google has in fact acquired a part of Oyster's team.
With the acquisition of Oyster, some rumors claim that Google will also start a similar service and give competition to rival Amazon.
The Oyster blog indicates that subscribers will receive a personal email regarding their account in the coming weeks. The company will share more details soon but Oyster assures its customers that service will not be affected and will operate normally till the company closes.
Customers can also claim a refund for their paid subscription by contacting refunds@oysterbooks.com.
